Near Beer

[Whattawort]

So my bro isn't allowed to imbibe but loves beer and has asked me to if I can do a near beer for him. I was thinking a bitter and mash low. Suggestions are welcome.

 

[ong]

Really depends what you mean by a near beer. 4% ABV? 2% ABV? Less than 1%? There are ways to drive off alcohol from brewed beer before carbonating, albeit at the host of much of your hops flavor.

 

[Nightshade]

Make any recipe you like, ferment as normal then after fermentation boil out the alcohol.

That is the short course in making near beer.

 

[Whattawort]

He said under 3% was acceptable. I'm not boiling off the alcohol. Just seems sooooo wrong.

 

[Nightshade]

Oh so you basically want to make a traditional session beer.

Take recipe and scale back to reach target OG. You can do it easily in Beersmith (if you use it), the final product will probably taste a bit light on flavor but depending on the recipe you should be able to replicate pretty close to exact flavor of original.

 

[Pomylka22]

There is a basic brewing video where they did a 100% rye beer that finished with a very low abv (sub 3 I believe) and they said that it didn't feel that light. Just another option...

 

[evanwiley]

Love to get detail on boiling off the alcohol from the group...

Would another option be to distill the beer to get the alcohol off (maybe have a moonshine) then cool and bottle the wash in the distiller? also guessing that you would need to use CO2 to make it bubbly....